Explosive Narratives: Terrorism and Anarchy in the Works of Émile Zola (review)

Abstract

Febles, Eduardo A. Explosive Narratives: Terrorista and in Works of Emile Zola. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. Pp. 200. ISBN: 904203064X. Eduardo Febles's study centrally discusses nineteenth-century concepts of anarchy and entropy as they relate to plot development and description in Zola's Germinal, and Travail, showing that before modernism, in these works the depiction of real was already threatened by dissolution into fragmentary. His well-argued thesis builds on Uri Eisenzweig's crisis of representation, showing that threat of anarchist violence breaks narrative and strains description in texts. As author puts it, in Zola anarchy stands for unthinkable or uncompromising destruction of all social institutions. Its political message and any appeal for reform are lost, and as such it takes on aspect of another nineteenth-century terror, entropy, measure of disorder in material world. Though this scientific concept was already associated to naturalista by David Baguley's Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision (1990), Febles' contribution is to show that as works grow less naturalist, they are more successful in conquering entropy, both in machines they imagine and in their descriptive practices. Chapter I, Souvarine's Vanishing Act: The Effacement of in argues that Zola's text reproduces bourgeois attitudes toward anarchist workers, despite novelist's presentation of novel as a treatment of the political question of workers?' Souvarine, Germinal's anarchist, only repeats slogans, without engaging with political theory, defining trait of his characterization remaining his identification as a social type. In Febles's reading, this is associated to Zola's narrator lacking neutrality, and not being on workers' side as one might expect. Instead, this voice makes workers appear as objects to be examined and studied by espousing bourgeois tastes in description of their milieu. The same prejudice is revealed by analysis of description of strike, in which critic shows that narrator fails to achieve ironic distance. Febles demonstrates that workers' revolt is presented as inevitable and terror-inspiring cataclysm, image which mirrors entropic breakdown of their machines. Such ideas echo Jacques Noiray's work in Le Romancier et la machine, but here focus is on terror of entropy as an upper class phantasm, decay being a limiting factor for industrial productivity. Fittingly, destruction of Voreux mine is read as a consequence of entropic decay, but Febles shows that Zola's description of event is itself entropic in its accumulation of detail. The limits of description as replica of reality are revealed as narrator finds event impossible to seize by a single point of view. The second chapter, Anarchy as Narrative Capital: Emplotment of Terrorism in Paris posits third Ville novel as a suitable successor to Germinal both because Zola sees it as a discussion of socialist movement, and because despite this, as in earlier novel, anarchy is central political issue. Febles argues that this focus, like urban setting, which is more commonly addressed by critics, tests naturalist genre's capacity of assimilation. Pushing further than in Germinal, he argues that Zola's description of proletarian and bourgeois milieus reveals their inter-dependency: workers are anarchist as a consequence of harsh labor practices they endure. …